


Stinger and Claw

by feveredsweetness



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ethanessa, F/M, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Heaven, Post series finale, Psychological Trauma, Resolution, Romance, Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8023666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feveredsweetness/pseuds/feveredsweetness
Summary: Vanessa returns for Ethan.





	Stinger and Claw

**Author's Note:**

> _Disappear here, the Earth no longer a home._   
>  _Disappear here, my home rests with your bones._   
>  _I drink in your spirit,_   
>  _Dance in all your mirth._   
>  _Me and thee, one and whole._   
>  _Me and thee are destined souls._   
> 

Ethan had stayed, long after Sir Malcolm left to retire to his personal chambers, his eyes pinched shut. Now, he twitches, wrestling a fitful slumber. He dares not sleep in Vanessa's bed, though he knows she would wish him to. 

He had tried, but the scent of her, preserved within the pillow cases and richly patterned spread, was too much. Ceaseless visions of hopes long since withered would drive him to insatiable habits. Any steps he took would lead him astray from where he was destined to tread.

Lupus Dei. 

Guilt had clawed at him in days since passed. Stalked him into the furthest stretches of his dreams; transformed them into poison as he woke, his vessel plagued with tremors.  


Meanwhile, Ethan's frame slumps alongside the wall, his body awkwardly curled up into itself. 

Panicked snuffles produce themselves as he sleeps, saliva sticky and cloying in his grief, choking him to reverberating dread in the still room.

His mind conjures blood, seeping onto his hands. Dead weight in his arms. The smell of gun powder. Peace etched across his beloved's face, but absent in his soul. 

The soft glow of candlelight burns his eyes. 

He feels himself crumbling as he carefully lays her down on a floor all too white, blending in all too well with her skin. A raven-haired shell.

He steps out. Where, he doesn't know. He returns far too soon.

Only...

Ethan's lungs falter before sputtering back to life.

Pale, elegant fingers brush through his more closely cropped hair.

A voice reaches into his ear, tugging at his heart like an innocent youth's dream.

"I do miss the longer locks," Vanessa whispers to him. Her fingers caress his ear before wandering down his neck as she steps back. 

Ethan blinks, his vision blindingly brightening. A grin shatters his mournful mask, causing the woman to smile in return, her fondness for him making her all the more radiant.

"Let all be well, be well," she tells him; taking his hand, and leading him into a graceful waltz, the candlelight now more intimate and inviting. 

Music plays. From where, he cannot place. The symphony picks up its tempo, and the two of them move fluidly throughout the white polished room. For a time, Ethan is lured back into the safe and warm seclusion of the house on the moors. Nurturing wind encases him and his beloved as Vanessa guides him effortlessly, with him following with the unpracticed charm of a willing pupil.

The skies are a stretch of greys and blues, with clouds lightly spread. The Earth beneath their feet is dry but promising of flourishing life come spring once more. 

Ethan tucks his head and nuzzles Vanessa, breathing her in as his eyes flutter in sentimental gratitude; all the tension draining from his muscles. His soul now feeling not quite as tainted with blood and sin and its awful entrails of guilt riddled grief. 

Vanessa places a chaste kiss upon his cheek, her lips catching the bead of salt water that had rolled its way out of Ethan despite all his resistance.

They continue to spin and spin until all is a stomach-wrenching blur, and the music descends into a warped composition straight from the bowels of the underworld.

The lovers look around them and find themselves back in the room where the foretold had spilled out into fruition. 

_There cannot be a happy end, for claw will slash and tooth will rend._

The candles around them melt, wax dripping and pooling around their gliding feet.

Vanessa's hand begins to slip from his grasp. Her stare deadens, mouth sloping downwards. Pain emerges in crystalline tears and wheezing air. Her head dips back, her eyes unnaturally glass-like.

Skin melts in with his own as he desperately tries to salvage and keep a firm grasp on her. The room spins, whirling everything into a kaleidoscopic void until Ethan finds himself and his surroundings still; stiller than a day where darkness comes to call and the air goes ripe with fear.

His gaze flits around the room before landing on his open, upturned palms. 

Blood. 

A ghastly wind surges through and around him, wiping out the source of light. Stability abandons him like a once trusted foundation. 

"Ethan."

He jolts awake. His head throbs as his neck cranes itself out of its unnatural position and crackles like London’s bustling streets underfoot. 

Ethan stretches out his legs, taking care to slide off the drool on his rugged jaw. He pinches the bridge of his nose before rubbing his temples briefly. He snarls knowing that the pressure will not pass. 

“Fuck,” he grumbles, soiled in fatigue and leeching grief. His eyes filter the incoming light, stinging, nastily bringing him back to the residual coils of an ended terror.

A sigh slips past his lips. His teeth perch dangerously on his bottom lip as his skull finds contact with the wall behind him. Ethan’s snarl grows feral, his eyes closing in an animosity he cannot settle. 

Dread within Vanessa’s room slithers, hissing in some foreign undertone. His skin prickles. He remains unmoving, save for the tremors in his hand.

_“With a kiss,” she asks._

_“With a kiss,” he hears himself echo. His heart jumps._

_“With love,” he corrects, mesmerized by the vibrancy of her eyes, haloed with red._

_Ethan brushes Vanessa’s hair away from her face and kisses her, languidly, as he desperately tries to commit it all to memory. Her lips fit against his own, soft in spite of leftover chapped patches. Her tongue sweeps against the seam of his mouth and he accepts the invitation to taste his beloved one last time. Sweet. Enticing. Powerful and lethal. Beautiful with the capacity to sting his heart like the western scorpions she held herself in comparison to. A predator to her very marrow, like himself. Protective until the end._

_She pulls away, placing her hand on his gun and nodding in reassurance._

_“With love,” she repeats, sealing in the pact for peace._

_His hand brushes over hers, his fingertips hesitating to leave her entirely. She soothes him, the tips of her delicate fingers pressing against his, gently. Her eyes glisten, the blue as breathtaking as the desert sky._

_Ethan exhales, his fingers slipping from Vanessa’s grasp. He settles and steadies his hand. Their hearts beat together, and he waits two counts, then tenses on the trigger before finally squeezing._

_She falls back in his arms, face aglow in martyrdom._

“Ethan.”

His eyes shoot open and across the room, fire hand stilled momentarily out of its tremor. 

His gaze seeks the location of Vanessa’s voice. He finds her at her bedroom window, her silhouette stark against billowing curtains. 

Sunlight fills the room entirely, bathing her as if in worship. He drinks her in, blue eyes dazzling as the unruly sea, raven hair gleaming, purple hues playing within the strands. 

Ethan picks himself up, clumsily and half dumbstruck, before regaining his steady stride. He soon finds himself standing before her, hand out and reaching for her face. 

Vanessa nestles into his touch, a hand of her own grasping his, cradling it almost like a lost holy relic newly found. 

Their foreheads touch. Her lips split into a heart aching grin. 

“I saw Our Lord,” she whispers, her voice like velvet to his ears. 

“He sent you back,” he replies, mouth spreading into a broad smile as tears streak down his cheeks and catch on the bow of his mouth. 

Her breath breezes against the skin there. Ethan glides his palm over the side of her face and plants his lips against hers, allowing her lungs to fill him, bringing him back to where peace reigns.

Vanessa’s smile blossoms further. She puts her palm to his chest, over his heart, and breaks away enough to speak against pursuing lips.

“He sent me back for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write this. These two would not leave me alone, and I love them dearly. 
> 
> Enjoy, and please leave kudos/comments. Writers are rather hungry for them. <3


End file.
